inkycircus

Nautical noise fest

IT'S OH SO QUIET. OR AT LEAST IT WAS UNTIL THE SEAHORSE JOINED IN... PHOTO: XIANSTUDIO)

When I was little, my family and I went on a boat trip to watch Orcas off Vancouver Island, and one of the things I remember being most moved by was hearing the songs of the whales via a hydraphone slung under the boat. It seemed utterly bizarre that these huge, beautiful creatures should make such an enchanting and surreal series of clicks and whistles, and it really stuck with me. But it turns out that it's not only Killer Whales who are making a racket underwater, sea horses are doing their bit to contribute to the din. Ok, so they're only making barely audible tiny clicks by snapping the back of their skulls on their top vertebra, but when you're surrounded by seawater a little goes a long way. More on the marine cacophany and the creatures that make it from MSN here.

Is there anybody out there?

If there is, then the Convection Rotation and planetary Transits (COROT) satellite will attempt to spot it. Space mission COROT blasted off from Baikonur Cosmodrome (which sounds a bit too much like an Eastern European Disco for my liking) and will journey beyond the Solar System to find out if there are any other planets like ours that might be able to support life. COROT will scrutinise more than 100,000 stars, and look for fluctuations in their brightness that might indicate the transit of a planet. It'll then study the internal conditions of the stars by looking at 'starquakes' - variations in the star's light caused by sound waves rippling across the surface. The plan will then be to return to these stars in the future with more sophisticated instrumentation to look for signatures of life, but at the moment the scientists just want to know what sort of planets might be out there. COROT's first port of call is the Milky Way, then it's off to Orion to continue its hunt for extra-terrestrial life.

More via BBC News here. (PHOTO: MWOOKIE)

Yo! Fresh goods over at Inkling..

Dearest readers. As promised, Inkling got a spate of new original content this past Tues.

Here's what's new.

• Anna tells us about this wild unappetizing process that turns dark turkey meat white. Mmmm, yummy.





• Kaisa met up with Ursula Franklin, Canada's very first female professor for an Inkling Q&A. Best quote: "What has changed is nobody will ask, 'Why does a nice girl like you want to be a metallurgist?' No one is surprised anymore." Nowadays no one bats an eyelash at nice girls going into metallurgy. Amen sister.


• Our new pal Stephanie Gower outs Canada's stance on asbestos - namely that we're a bunch of overly polite hypocrites preoccupied with unhealthy politics.
• Eva Amsen, who we know and love from Easternblot, gives us a one stop shop for all those coffee pros and cons.




• And finally I share some of my tales from visiting those tree canopy  researchers down in Washington state this summer. Reading between the lines you'll see that the entire experience was a total (and delightfully random) blast.


• We introduce our reviews go-to femme, Camille Rey, with her thoughts on Ben Stiller's "A Night at the Museum".   

Cat troubles...

(PHOTO: Steve Roberts)

When I grow up/retire, I am planning to buy a large tract of land in the Californian desert and run a big cat sanctuary..where abused or neglected cheetahs, tigers, lions, cougars, jaguars and leopards can cuddle me hang out in safety.  I mean, they really need me. The American Zoo and Aquarium Association estimates that 10,000 to 15,000 tigers alone are kept as pets in the US. And shockingly enough, many of these exotic pets end up injuring their owners (or dead and sold for bits). Since 2001 more than 250 private owners have given away their big cats, but zoos usually aren't interested in these mixed breed mutts (often lion/tiger hybrids).

Now I plan on doing a lot of research, hiring some smart people and running a real tight zoo-grade ship. I will have to investigate proper diets, enclosure design and socialization tactics. Because, in the end, I want to avoid the tigers attacking their keepers (me), as recently happened at the San Francisco Zoo. And also to avoid the cloud leopards escaping from their enclosures, as happened at the National Zoo in Washington (though luckily, the leopard was found half an hour later snoozing on the pavement by its pen...).

For we all like foggy pudding

In the last few days of this week before Christmas, London (along with much of Britain) has been cloaked in a freezing fog. It has turned Heathrow into even more of a massive disaster than usual, which has had a knock on effect on the roads and rail networks, because everyone knows if there is one thing we Brits can't deal with it's 'adverse' weather.Everything grinds to a halt. Because I have no plans to go anywhere, I quite like the fog. It gives the city a Sherlock Holmes, Victorian kind of feel, largely thanks to the triangle of orange light under each streetlamp. And it makes it doubly cosy being inside.

The only effect this fog has had on me is to make me pick up a bit of meteorology, as every other news bulletin carries an item on the subject. The fog is apparently being caused by a large area of high pressure over the UK, coupled with weak sun and no wind. The high pressure traps moist air near the surface, which then cools, the water condenses and forms a fog particle. The more fog particles, the worse the visibility. Clearly there are a fair few particles in the air over London tonight.

Slightly off the subject, I looked up London fog in Wikipedia to find out about London Pea Soup fogs and what made them so bad,  and discovered that there is a drink called a London Fog that is made of steamed milk, vanilla syrup and an Earl Grey teabag. According to Wikipedia its very popular in Vancouver of all places...

(PHOTO: GWIRE)

Seal of approval for therapeutic robot toy

SEAL PUPS: CUTE, BUT IMPRACTICAL AS PETS. GET A PARO INSTEAD. OR A KITTEN. (PHOTO: PKEMP)
Forget your robosapien, an award winning robot seal called Paro is surely the must-have Christmas toy of 2006. But not for children, for elderly people. The seal is soft and furry, makes sounds like a real baby seal, moves, and responds to its name. The theory is that having a pet is of psychological and physical benefit to the older people. It's not a new theory, the psychological benefits of pet ownership have been known of for a while (eg this NY times article from 1990 about the use of animals in psychotherapy of children) but the makers of this electronic creature hope it will give these sorts of benefits in places where pet ownership is impractical, such as care homes (although having a pet baby seal would be impractical pretty well anywhere). I'll say one thing for it, it is pretty cute.

Via BBC News.

Showing your true colours

In terms of housepets, dogs are usually the most open. Cats reserve judgement, they take their time to decide if they like you, but dogs are who they are. And apparently, the colour of a dog's fur is closely related to precisely who they are. So dogs actually have no need to wear their heart on their sleeve, because they wear their true personality all over their body.

Researchers subjected Labrador puppies of different colours to a selection of personality tests, and found that yellow labs are the most aggressive, black labs next, and chocolate labs the mildest. The tests involved watching the pups' social skills, observing their behaviour when they were restrained, and lifting them up off the floor to see what they did (yellow labs wriggled and tried to bite the scientists, chocolate labs wagged their tails and basked in the attention). They concluded that this was something to do with their development, that the skin and the nervous system develop from the same layer of cells in the embryo, the ectoderm.

I think this is a bit of a genius idea. Not only did the scientists come up with a piece of research that necessitated them getting a whole load of Labrador puppies in a room and playing with them, they also produced something that's actually quite interesting, even if it wasn't something brilliantly new. Great stuff. Plus it gave me an excuse to post a picture of a puppy. Now all I need is an excuse to post a kitten picture...

Via ABC Australia. (PHOTO: PEPOITANA)

A new addition to the Inky family

Okay..so who has noticed our (Anna and Anne's) shoddy posting over the last few weeks? It's not that we haven't needed a rant (Anna) or found oh-so-cool stuff on the Internet (Anne). It's just that we've been busy.

You remember this annoyingly cryptic post where we hinted that something very exciting would be happening on November 14th? So it's a little late, but just in time for Christmas, the birthday of Inkling Magazine.

I can't say much more than go check it out (and tell EVERYONE YOU KNOW). Also, check out me babbling like an idiot on national radio on Mary Darcy's show on women - 51%. I was forced to hide in the basement as my entire family listened last night.

I want one

My brother and I used to have a NES and oh how we loved it. We wasted many happy hours playing Super Mario Bros. and Bubble Bobble. Many hours. So happy. So while perusing this year's must have Christmas presents on ThinkGeek, I saw this alarm clock and fell head over heels in love. I want. Sadly, it's out of stock, possibly for good, and so I'll just have to make do with using my mobile phone as an alarm like everyone else. Curses.

Not exactly a light bulb moment

Christie's auction house in London had its first science themed auction this week, but one of its star attractions failed to sell. Lots such as one of Einstein's first essays went quickly, but a box of lightbulbs that represented Thomas Edison's patented design failed to reach the reserve price. There's probably more too it than this, it seems like people failing to appreciate how important inventors such as Edison were to the lives we live today. I know it's not the same, but I just don't quite understand how people are prepared to pay $140m for a painting that looks like a big old mess of splatterings, and yet nobody would stump up £200,000 for an artefact that represents one of the most amazing discoveries bar none. Ok, so Jackson Pollock was a talented artist and his works are very attractive. But they're not that attractive. And yes, I am biased. Art is pretty and all, but science is different. And if Thomas Edison hadn't patented the commercially viable lightbulb we wouldn't have fairy lights, and how drab a Christmas would that be?

Via News @ Nature. (PHOTO: V1V6)